"One who solicits mercy for his fellow, while he himself is in need of mercy will be answered first"
Religion has for too long focused on rewards for doing good deeds. Although not a scholar of religion myself, but I do suspect that this focus on rewards is a modern concept closely tied to the capitalistic system. In the previous age, when a carpenter's or a black smiths son were bound by tradition to join the same system, when leaving your ancestral land was considered a grave sin, such selfish concepts about good and evil would have been absent. The breaking of the social bonds must have lead to a change in people's attitude towards sacrifice and shifted their focus towards rewards. Sacrifice, for centuries, has been the key to spiritual/psychological salvation and will remain the key for ages to come.
